Let’s play economics-by-metaphor

The patient was seriously ill. Dr Balls advised antibiotics but Dr Osborne argued it was a virus

“A riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.” That was Winston Churchill’s view of Russia one month after the outbreak of the second world war in Europe. It was also Andy Haldane’s view of the British economy in a speech given in Scarborough on June 18. Coming from the Bank of England’s new chief economist, this seems an alarming parallel, although all Haldane meant to say was that the situation was hard to read.

Haldane, who has long given the Bank’s most thought-provoking speeches, is fond of a literary flourish – indeed, his Scarborough speech was an extended metaphor on cricket, with the uncertain prospects of the economy compared to a well-bowled cricket ball. Should the Bank respond like England’s veteran batsman Ian Bell (take the initiative, front foot forward) or like newcomer Joe Root (wait for things to become clearer, acting at the last possible moment) or, for that matter, like the long-retired Geoff Boycott (commit to a relentlessly defensive strategy regardless of circumstances)?

The context for this – although Haldane did not say it – is that his boss, Mark Carney, has abruptly shifted his stance. Carney spent the first few months of his tenure committing to low interest rates, and is suddenly warning that rates will rise sooner than anyone expects. Geoff Boycott, after fending off ball after ball, has suddenly started trying to slog everything over the members’ pavilion.

Some international readers will be none the wiser after all these cricketing similes but I’ve decided that the game of economics-by-metaphor is lots of fun, and have been pondering what the best metaphor might be for the puzzling state of the UK economy.

Haldane’s evocation of Churchill prompts me to compare the UK in 1939 with the UK in 2008. The man in charge when it all began fumbled some things badly but got no credit for good decisions in an impossible bind. The bank bailouts were like Dunkirk – a heroic, improvised, last-gasp tactic that laid some foundations for future success, while conceding that everything up to that point had basically been a catastrophe. Then came grinding dogmatism, often incompetently managed, which postponed the long slog. Eventually a victory of sorts was won thanks to the industrial power of the US; the bloodied UK was never quite the same again. (This analogy gives David Cameron the role of Winston Churchill but no parallel is ever exact.)

But what of the UK today? The image that comes to mind is of an overconfident City wide boy on gardening leave, waiting for his next well-paid job. He’s feeling flush because his flat in gentrifying Hackney has doubled in value. He’s spending liberally on home improvements, on restaurant meals, on cocaine and Polish lap-dancers. (The Office for National Statistics will now be recording this activity as part of GDP.) Above all, he’s buying nice stuff from abroad. There is lots of activity for the low-paid service sector and for importers but whether our City boy will actually get another real job soon is an open question.

Perhaps instead we should view the British economy as a fractious marriage. Hubby is English; swaggering and self-obsessed, he keeps telling his Scottish wife she’s beautiful and that they’re great together. Yet he never takes her seriously or listens to a word she says. She yearns to get away from him but she’s afraid to leave. Her single friends in Iceland and Ireland have had some tough times but at least they have their identity and self-respect. He’s cocky and has convinced himself that she’s never going to leave him, yet she may well walk out a few months before Christmas. Any divorce is going to be hellish because their financial affairs are all tangled up together. He’s probably going to get angry, resentful and drunk, and, before you know it, he’ll say something he regrets to his neighbours Angela and François. Give him five years and he’ll quit the neighbourhood entirely to spend the following decade in his vest and underpants, obsessed with whatever’s on Sky.

. . .

Then there’s the question of who takes the credit for what is, undoubtedly, a far stronger recovery than anyone expected a couple of years ago. Here a medical metaphor may suffice.

For a long time the patient was seriously ill. Dr Ed Balls advised a short course of mild antibiotics, on the grounds that a long course of strong antibiotics would be too expensive. Dr George Osborne argued that the patient was suffering from a virus and antibiotics would simply be wasteful and ineffective. No reliable diagnosis being available, the two men yelled at each other across the hospital bed, with Dr Osborne’s assistants periodically walking in, slapping the patient and yelling at him not to be such a malingerer. Now that the patient has staggered out of the hospital and is self-medicating on espresso, Dr Osborne argues that Dr Balls has been exposed as a fraudulent quack.

Each man will be hoping to run the economy after next year’s election, so British voters may decide to give them both the metaphor they deserve, good and hard.

Also published at ft.com.